Global Change impacts:
From ice to water & forests to fires
GEOSS support for IPCC assessments
SESSION 1: DATA USERS AND DATA PROVIDERS
Data needs and priorities of the research community
Geneva,1st February 2011
Pascal Peduzzi
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Glaciers
Water
Cyclones
Forests
Fires
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
An overview
Glaciers
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Glaciers and related issues
 Observations: In the five Central Asian countries
(Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan),
40% of the population depends on glacier melt
for their water needs (90% for agriculture).
 Question: what are the impacts of glacier retreat
on water supply?
 Issues:
- Monitoring is declining (even collapsing) since the end
of USSR.
- Most data is in paper format
- Lack of cooperation between the countries
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Glaciers and related issues
Observations: Glaciers in South America
have significantly decreased,…
Question: is it due to higher temperatures,
decline of precipitations, or both?
Issue: 20,000 US$ requested to access
the data from 5 meteorological stations.
Are funds for maintaining stations
sufficient?
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Glaciers and related issues
In the Himalaya, glaciers will all be gone
by 2035.
OK, that’s might not be true, but now
people want to know when!
Issue: It’s a vast region and the issue of
disputed territories between countries
(China, India, Pakistan, Bhutan and Nepal), makes the
assessment more difficult to undertake.
Need for an external look?
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Glaciers : Questions




World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) has the
mandate for centralising the information.
Can we develop a common baseline data set on
glacier monitoring, climate and hydrology?
Re-activation of the monitoring for new data in some
regions is essential.
Coordination between ongoing international projects –
e.g. WGMS, Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers
(GTN-G), World Meteorological Organisation (WMO),
the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) – and the
regional projects - Central Asian Water (CAWa), the
future Central Asian Regional Glaciological Centre or
the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Water: Rive flow data
Understanding impacts on water supply
requests good data on river flow.
This is also needed for modelling floods
The Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC)
has the mandate (from WMO) to centralise
the river flow data and to distribute them.
This is based on voluntary contributions,…
countries are not so generous.
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Water : River flow data
Filter: min. 7 years, 12 months:
11 stations
39
in France,
India 11 in Portugal
6,904
stations
938 stations in France, on request
GRDC data (as of 2008)
http://www.bafg.de/GRDC/
211 stations in Portugal, directly available on-line for download
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Water: floods events data
Global monitoring of floods events, done
by DFO…
Data are not freely accessible, but also
used to finance the team.
Most events detected by MODIS sensors,
more radar images would be an asset.
http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu/
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Water: modelling flood
UNEP/GRID-Europe made a first global
flood model. It is based on hydroshed
(90m resolution)
Issue: hydroshed has been “burned” to
allow water flow in the correct direction.
This makes digital cliffs where modelled
waters disappears.
http://preview.grid.unep.ch
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Water: questions
 Is it because data on water is a touchy issue for
countries?
 Is it due to collected on voluntary basis?
 Would data collected directly from WMO be
more incentive for governmental agencies?
 Can we imagine two type of accesses:
a) for climate change and risk studies (free &
automatic)
b) other studies, on special request.
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Cyclones: good news
Data used to be “non-centralised” in 9
centres, each of them with their own unit.
Some data were only available in paper
format.
Now we have IBtrACS (vs 3)
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ibtracs/
Global tropical cyclones wind buffers will
be available for 1970 to 2009.
http://preview.grid.unep.ch
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Deforestation
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Deforestation
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Forest
Question: What is the deforestation rates?
This is also needed for REDD
Issue 1: What is a forest ? Definitions has
changed over the years.
Issue 2: except ESA GlobeCover 2005
and 2008, the previous landcover were
based on different satellite sensors,
legends were different, thus preventing
comparisons.
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Deforestation, less rain.
Most models show
that deforestation
will decrease
precipitation in
tropical areas.
(e.g Hasler N., Werth
D. and Avissar R.,
2009).
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Forest: less biomass produced
Figure 2 Spatial pattern of terrestrial NPP linear trends from 2000 through 2009
sources: with kind permission of Zhao and Running, 2010.
We thought that with
more CO2, there would be
more photosynthesis,
thus more biomass
(Nemani et al. 2003). But it
is not the case. Water
might be the limitation
factor (Zao & Runnin,
2010)
More CO2 was supposed to increase photosynthesis (Nemani et al., 2003). But recent
measurements on the warmest decades (2000-2009) show that the creation of biomass is
slower. (Zao & Running, 2010)
Photosynthesis also request H2O, which may be the limiting factors
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Forest: drought, more fires
More drought, more forest
fires (Van der Werf et al.
2008)
More drought more forest fires.
From Van der Werf et al., (2008), reproduced with kind permission from the authors and courtesy of National Academy of
Science.
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Positive feedbacks
Climate
change,
deforestat
ion,
drought
and forest
fires
A tripleloop of
positive
feedbacks
Deforestation
Less precipitations
Higher temperatures
More droughts
Less
Photosynthesis
More
Forest fires
Warmer
temperatures
Less
Carbon sinks
More CO2
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Peduzzi et al. (in prep.)
Forest and Fires
Need more researches on these positive
feedbacks (deforestation, drought, forest
fires, climate change).
Need better data on deforestation
(comparable through time)
This is not only data that we need. We
need more political will to tackle these
issues, there is enough knowledge to take
actions.
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
Data on risk, natural hazards
The PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform
The PREVIEW Global
Risk Data Platform
provides 60 global layers
of data on natural hazard,
exposure and risk.
Supported by UNISDR,
UNEP, World Bank and
UNDP.
http://preview.grid.unep.ch/
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011
www.grid.unep.ch
Thank you
Http://preview.grid.unep.ch
Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011